Our story
Devizes Swap Shop began in 2022, with a small group of friends within our local volunteer climate group, Sustainable Devizes, looking for ways to reduce waste at a community level. Our first Swap Shop, we just had a gazebo in the Market Place with a couple of tables of books, games etc., sourced almost entirely from the group (we basically just had a clearout when our kids weren’t looking!). Since then it has grown to welcome hundreds of people at each event; playing a role in connecting our community, as well as reducing waste and supporting local families.
The model we operate is super simple, entry is free, there’s no token system or requirement to donate anything in order to take something. We’re open for donations the evening and early morning ahead of the swap, we lay everything out in an ordered way, so it all looks nice. Then when the Swap opens, folks can come in and take whatever they want.
The items we include at our main Swaps are: books (for kids and adults), toys, games, puzzles, school uniform, craft items, sports equipment, and sometimes house plants too. Though we have hosted Swaps for all sorts of other items too.
The aha moment that led us to the Swaps was actually an initiative by a fellow Wiltshire sustainability person, Jen Gale. She had this brilliant social media challenge. It was called Nothing New in ‘22, and the idea was for everyone that took part to do their best not to buy anything new for a year. Taking part in this created a huge mindset shift for us, and got us thinking, how do we take this beyond an individual action? How can we facilitate not-buying-new-things in our community? How can we make it easier for people to make that choice? Rather than being judgy about it. And swaps are the answer.
We’re not telling people off, or asking them to sacrifice anything, just to change the way we do things. So instead of that linear take-make-waste economy, we’re swapping and sharing. And we’re normalising that as a positive experience. That’s why I love the Swap Shops, because instead of only talking about the problems, we’re inviting people to be a part of the solution. We’re modelling a little piece of what a lower-carbon future might look like, and people are there having a great time.
Our initial motivation was really about reducing waste, and trying to (gently) change people’s mindsets around consumption, but with the cost of living crisis, we can really see that the Swaps are a huge help to families. Hopefully without it seeming patronising or stigmatising as our framing is you are helping, by reducing waste, rather than you are being helped, by being given free stuff.
Our advice
Alongside a small, but dedicated gang of volunteers, the key to us making this a success has been partnerships. Of course this will vary depending on the local context, but I\'ll describe ours here in the hope that this will be useful for people thinking about bringing swapping to their area.
We’re lucky to have the support of a couple of local Churches who are proactive about community initiatives. Collaborating with St James’ means we have a venue, and storage in between swaps, which is probably the biggest challenge of keeping a scheme like this going. We’ve been hosting seasonal Seed and Plant Swaps at St Andrew’s Church for years. We also work with the local Family Hub charity, Spurgeons, who use the event as an opportunity to connect with families who may not otherwise be aware of their services.
Chippenham Uniform Exchange come and join us on Swap days which helps us as we don’t have to find storage for uniform between swaps, and they can top up their stocks with Devizes donations, and we give them a share of the donation bucket at the end of the day as well. And finally Fairtrade Devizes do the refreshments for us, which of course is absolutely essential as we all know, volunteers are powered by tea.
Also to say that Swaps can be for anything really, whatever you can identify a need for in your community. We started with books and toys, then expanded to school uniform. We\'ve hosted Swaps for all sorts of items, from homewares to halloween costumes. I think it\'s better to have some limit to the items that are part of each Swap event, otherwise it can become a bit too much of a free-for-all, you want some commonality between what people are donating and what they are likely to want to take home.
Another piece of advice I would give is to start small and then scale up, which allows people to get used to the idea. I remember a child at our first swap saying to me “excuse me, how much is this?”... and responding, “it’s free my love, and if you’ve got anything at home you’re done playing with, maybe you can bring it down for someone else to enjoy? ” and just watching the penny drop in their brain like ‘boom’. I think the simple concept of just sharing in this way can be kinda hard for folks to get their head around at first, as consumption and commerce and capitalism are so ingrained and normalised in our culture. So starting slowly and allowing folks to get used to the idea is definitely the way I would approach it.
Our metrics
We set up our space with exit via a Reclaim Station, where volunteers count and weigh all the outgoing items, as a way of measuring impact. These are our totals at the time of writing, this is from Book and Toy Swaps held between December 2022 and November 2025:
9 - swap events held
3,272kg - weight of total items swapped
3,773 - books
3,842 - games, toys and jigsaws
931 - uniform
680 - other
